


An Unknown Feeling

by Gato_322



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: F/M, Slow Burn, Teenage Dorks
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-15
Updated: 2018-09-17
Packaged: 2019-07-12 13:04:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15995813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gato_322/pseuds/Gato_322
Summary: "I need you to keep me far away from Lance, at all costs."Hunk stares back, arching a brow. "Why?"Pidge huffs. The feeling in her chest tightens, bursts, floods her with embarrassment, and the words drop out of her mouth in a graceless hurry. "Because I'm in love with him or something."





	1. Flammable Contents: Use with Caution

**Author's Note:**

> Watering the Plance, one chapter at a time!

Being stuck in the endless void of space never would’ve bode well for any healthy human individual. Being a teenager stuck in the endless void of space meant something adults considered a nightmare amplify tenfold.

Time became nonexistent, growing up felt like something trivial to track, and did anyone even remember what the moon looked like? Who knows, but sarcastic remarks and petty pranks kept the mood as stable as it could be.

Pidge understood what she was in for simply signing up for the Garrison, but the Castle of Lions still left her vaguely unprepared for what was to come. Being kept with hundreds of other teenagers was one thing; being kept with the constant same number meant something else. 

On the pros side, bonds were strengthened. On the cons, the onslaught of puberty-driven hormones meant everything could snap to an overwhelming status in a blink of an eye. Pidge had her momentary breakdowns in the middle of her room in the same way Hunk had the occasional panic attack and Keith had his rare burst of anger. Bless Shiro’s heart for keeping them all sane; leading Voltron as well as a gaggle of misguided teenagers probably shot way past even the “extremely difficult” range. Aside from negative, there’d been the occasional fling she’d catch wind of somewhere in the castle (not that she’d ever take part in such scandalous endeavors), but romance had never really been established between anyone; even after those late-night flings. 

They were a team, a unit, a group of friends on a deep emotional connection that rose high above all the negatives of teenage hell. Quite evidently, that relationship oughta stay how it was. 

Pidge was a paladin of Voltron, cosmic soldier under Queen Allura, and pilot of the Green Lion. 

She was unabashedly, surely, positively, _not_ in love.   

Or that’s what she told herself.

 

Breakfast begins promptly 10 minutes after everyone rises, rolls, or flops out of bed. The event is always a gloriously chaotic affair; the team found long ago that their morning routines were far from compatible.  

Pidge sinks into her seat, switching on her laptop and blinking the remnants of sleep from bleary eyes. Hunk yawns across from her, and Shiro moves across the room to help Coran set out the food. The laptop glows bright green and Hunk moves over to stare down at her highly illuminated face. 

“How many hours did you get?” He calls weakly. 

“A whopping 5.” Pidge taps at a few keys and her screen reverts back to last night’s code. “You?” 

“I think 4? I’m not sure, since _somebody_ hasn’t returned my alarm clock.” 

Pidge pauses, feeling her shoulders lift just a bit as another body slips into the chair beside her. Just from the scent of cologne itself, she knows it’s Lance. She refuses to look up under any circumstance.  

“You can’t get mad at me for keeping that!” Lance retorts, leaning back in his chair with hands hooked behind his head. Pidge can’t help but take the slightest peek out of the corner of her eye before snapping back to the screen. His hair still stubbornly keeps the morning tousle of bedhead but every other bit of his face is immaculate. 

“Mmm...” Hunk wraps his hands around a nearby mug of nunvil that Coran plops next to him. The whir and rising action around the trio become lost amidst their conversation, and Pidge blinks as she notices a mug had appeared beside her too. “It’s wearing on me, man. I miss having a sense of time at night, even if it’s like...not night.” 

“To be honest, Hunk, I kinda lost it in my laundry like two days ago. Lend a shovel and help me out with it, how bout that?” 

Hunk sighs, steeling his face as he sips from the mug. “Ughhh thisisdisgusting...” 

“Gotta search for the clock but we’ll never find the time!” Lance bursts in uproarious laughter, elbowing Pidge as Hunk groans from across them. Pidge winces, smacking his elbow away in one swift move. “Don’ttouchme.” 

“Oof, I forgot about Pidge’s invisible barrier in the morning! Hunk, did you get the key today?” 

“Oh, I never get the key,” Hunk mumbles. 

“Hah.” Pidge finally forces herself to look towards Lance, shifting her glasses up to see him properly. “Just watch. I can make it so I’m not the only one with the invisible barrier.” 

“That’s ominous.” Lance shoots her a gleaming smile. “Elaborate.” 

“Blue can give you the silent treatment and you can’t do a thing about it. I could activate her particle barrier whenever you piss me off too much.” 

“Oh that’s evil. Hats off to you.”  

Hunk sets down his mug, eyes wide. “Wait, can you really do that?” 

“Alright, team!” Shiro crows, as Keith and Allura settle into their respective seats. The plates of food sit varied across the table. “We’re talking about creating allies today. Look alive. Pidge, take notes.” 

Pidge pulls up the right document and taps her fingers against the keys idly. Lance imitates her against the table before reaching for a plate of pancakes. 

Once everyone gathers their fair share of breakfast, Shiro begins. 

“We’ve united 35 different allied worlds in the Voltron Coalition, but it’s gonna take a lot more than that to be any sort of threat to Voltron.” Shiro pulls up a hologram on a tablet in his hands, an visual of their current universe speckled with glowing green dots. “Unfortunately, we’ve got 12 of them currently swamped by Galra patrols, due to their own crimes.” 

“Running from the po-po,” Lance remarks. “Wait, so are we recruiting criminal civilizations orrr...” 

“We’re not that stupid,” Keith pipes up, shooting Lance an irritated look. “This is the Galra we’re talking about. Speaking against Zarkon is enough to get lasers pointed at you anyday.” 

“Right, let me just sit out in the vacuum of space and scream about our hatred for Zarkon!” Lance takes a massive bite out of a mysterious bright blue substance on his plate. Pidge figures it’s the equivalent of scrambled eggs judging by taste. She pokes at the food half-heartedly, listening as Shiro quickly shuts down Lance and Keith’s bickering.  

“Right now, we gotta focus on removing these allies from Galran surveillance, along with rescuing any possible captives that have been swept into trouble.” Shiro brings up a less defined map, but Pidge still directs a copy to her laptop.  

“So we’re doing some prison break schemes?” Hunk says wearily. “All of us?” 

“I could handle that easy! Snipe the guards and open the gates. Pew, pew.” Lance forms a makeshift finger gun, turning and poking Pidge with it. She scowls at him and hopes it’s enough of a message. 

“This has to remain a calculated rescue mission, planned accordingly,” Allura takes the tablet from Shiro, scrolling through a mess of files. “Pidge, I’m sending you assignments now. Before we focus on recruiting more, we’ll focus on saving these civilizations. The earlier, the better. The Galra is yet to make a permanent mark on their lands, and we can use any ease we can.” 

Pidge watches the text scroll across her screen. Lance butts his head in, nearly touching his ear against hers and she flinches. She snaps her fingers hard against his forehead and he pulls away with a yelp.  

“Each of us will be grouped and tackle 6 civilizations over the next two weeks. In the meantime, we’ll intercept as much as we can about Zarkon’s plans from the command ships we come across.”  

“Multitasking then?” Pidge types out a few more notes. “On it.” 

“This is our current mission,” Shiro finalizes as Allura closes the tab. “Pidge will send out the data on who gets which civilizations. We’ve paired them out considering lion elements and best suited styles of communication. Does anyone have any questions?” 

Hunk raises a feeble hand as Lance’s immediately shoots up, waving frantically like a third-grader in math class. Hunk rolls his eyes and doesn’t wait. “Wait, so not to sound heartless or anything, but why exactly do we focus on freeing the civilizations ourselves? We allied strong capable people and all so, like, they oughta be able to fight on their own, right?” 

“These particular civilizations became incapacitated in a few unexpected forms.” Allura nods to Pidge, and Pidge rightfully prepares for more notes. “One planet, the Lagonians, have been hit by a massive weather phenomenon that you earthlings regard as a ‘hurricane’ and ‘earthquake’ put in one. The Qetrians were hit by a massive casualty of their key soldiers. As members of the Voltron coalition, they are entitled to our help if they are in need. We mustn’t question the motives; they have sworn their duty to us, and we must respond the same.” 

Hunk nods, waving for Lance to shoot his question. 

“Okay, so!” Lance slams his hand down, rattling a fork in his plate. “Do the civilizations know we’re coming to swoop in and save the day? Cuz if I have the capability of a parade in the end...” 

Pidge snorts, typing furiously as she notes the final course of action for specific civilizations. One specific civilization was tackling a giant squid epidemic; the few paragraphs take up her screen and she focuses on finishing the section. 

“Lance, please,” Shiro sighs. “Have sensitivity. No, we are going to arrive unannounced, to aid our surprise attacks. No communication with these civilizations unless they ask first.” 

Pidge’s fingers fly across the keyboard. Lance shifts in his chair, moving slightly too close, and she feels annoyance churn in her gut. It momentarily begins to shift to anger as Lance continues unfazed. “Ok wellll maybe we could send a small secret message to get a parade set up just for funsies?” 

Shiro shakes his head, aware of Lance’s antics enough to be used to it. “No parades. For a _very_ long time, Lance.” 

Lance is too close. His elbow is inches from her shoulder. Pidge catches a fleeting emotion on his face she can’t decipher before he shrugs dramatically. “Well maybe one day—“ 

“ _Lance!_ ”  

Pidge jumps and Hunk’s spoon clatters to the floor. Everyone turns to an enraged Keith hunched at the end of the table, glowering directly at Lance. Tension in the air spontaneously arrives, and Pidge feels her hands shaking. 

“Stop being immature about this and maybe have a little decency? People are _dying_ out there.” Keith stares Lance down, rage pushing him forward into ranting. “You know, Shiro, maybe it’s best to give Lance the most isolated populations; god forbid he give them a wrong first impression about what we stand for!” 

“Keith, back _off_!” Pidge snaps, surprising herself, something hot and furious and rapid stirring in her chest. Lance’s head snaps in her direction, bewildered, and Hunk ducks his head as if to avoid an onslaught of insults. “You yourself don’t know what we stand for! None of us do! We’re vigilantes and enemies and heroes and bystanders all at once, you don’t _know—“_ she stops herself, bringing the sentence to a painful halt. 

“Keith. Pidge.” Shiro doesn’t have to say more. Pidge huffs, straightening up, embarrassment smothering her anger at being chastised. Lance tries to meet her eyes but she doesn’t let him. She directs her gaze to the screen, what feels like static filling her head. 

The last thing she’d typed was a name. _Lance_ , directly next to a description of the Lagonians’ home world.  

_Oh, quiznak._

“Pidge...” Shiro begins, but Pidge doesn’t let him continue. She slams her computer shut, gathering it in her hands and stalking out of the room as quick as her feet can take her. 

Whenever Pidge felt confused, she automatically steered herself into the repair room. Her main coping method was to lose herself in the machinery; robots and engines had no feelings or hatred or sudden mood swings; just calculative pathways, a simple state of being for a specific reason.  

She rearranges a pile of metal sheets, avoiding her reflection. She knows for a fact her face is red. She can’t stand her blushing face; pale freckled cheeks dusted with red made her feel _vulnerable_. 

And to be fair, it wasn’t the first time she’d been vulnerable to Lance. 

_Two weeks ago_. She slams another sheet of metal down before heaving up a toolbox. _Those stupid two weeks ago._ <

She’d crash-landed on a desolate planet for something as small as a routine perimeter check. Green had frozen up and gone unresponsive and Pidge had eventually chalked it up to energy levels coming from that planet.  

Luckily enough, Green had fallen into liquid, a churning black sea that’d been so dense, Pidge couldn’t find a way out. Unluckily, that only left Lance as the right candidate to help her.  

And he’d made it. He’d arrived, arm outstretched, crowing about some nonsense about helping a damsel in distress which she’d quickly responded with a foot to his shin. But there’d been something to his demeanor that flipped a switch in Pidge. 

She didn’t know what. She couldn’t place a finger on it, and it frustrated her not to be able to calculate something so stupid and mundane and obvious as _falling in_ — 

Two weeks ago. The feelings began and when she’d hoped it’d fade into the background like all the other questionable memories of the past, like her father and her brother’s imprisonment, like life back home in the planet that grew unfamiliar as years stretched on, this particular feeling denied her wish. It’s growing stronger by the day and she loathes the heat on her cheeks. 

To think of Lance as her knight in shining armor feels infuriating and suffocating and _right_ , and she hates it. 

“Aaaargh!” She pounds a hammer against the sheet, a resonating clang traveling towards the very back of her molars. She does it again and again and again until her muscles burn and her back aches, which in hindsight, only took 8 or 9 swings. She wasn’t built to be a bulky blacksmith, only an agile fighter and a swift engineer. 

She throws down the hammer, picks up the tools, and sits herself right in front of a spare engine.  

She’d get over it. Crushes are crushes. Lance is Lance. It’s a formula destined to fail. Pidge heaves out a shaky sigh, busting out a flashlight and peering into the engine’s mechanisms.  

Repairs were methodical, trial and error, but ultimately had its end; whether it were a scrapped part or a working salvation. Pidge would do the same to that frustrating little feeling in the core of her chest, and she hoped it’d go in the direction she wanted. 

“Whatcha working on?!” 

Pidge shrieks and spins around, all her breath escaping in one swift breath as Lance leans in behind her. “ _Jesus_ , Lance!” 

“It’s pronounced Hey-soos.” Lance beams at her, arms clasped behind back, not a single trace of shame on his face. “Did I scare ya?” 

“No,” Pidge spits. 

“Lies,” Lance retorts, narrowing his eyes at her. “I saw that jump, Pidge Holt, confess your wrongdoing or meet me in court!” 

“I plead the fifth.” Pidge attempts to calm her frantic heartbeat, shakily lifting up the flashlight again. “Don’t do that if you don’t want booby traps lined up all around this room.”  

Lance ultimately giggles and Pidge responds by flashing the light directly in his eyes. He huffs and tries to step out of the way but she keeps it locked on his face, intent on moving his gaze anywhere but her flushed face. “I don’t typically mind the company when I work but what do you want, Lance?” 

“Just...wanted to say something! Can I do that without the spotlight?” Lance blinks a few times before clapping a hand over his eyes.  

“No. Sing like the opera.”  

Lance quirks a smile but it falls almost as quickly. “I just...I wanna say thanks. For having my back out there.” 

Pidge puts down the flashlight, shooting him a questionable look. Lance shrugs and stuffs his hands in his pocket, kicking at the floor. “Ya know how I am. I don’t take things seriously enough, so uh...I get carried away. I’m used to it, sure, but I still don’t like the whole ‘ream Lance out for one wrong joke’ game, ya know?” 

“We’re in a war, Lance.” Pidge notices the crease in his eyebrows, marks of stress she’d never really associated with Lance. He was the opposite of stress. Laid-back and chill and flowing like his lion’s element, like a dense black sea.  _Two weeks._

“And what? Does that mean we have to be depressed all the time? Worrying about death and destruction and invasion 24 hours a day has to drive a man crazy. Just look at Shiro, poor guy’s hair is _white_.” He pauses, seeming to calculate the weight of his words. “I just...I dunno, Pidge, I just need the humor to get by, ya know. I just...ya know?” 

Pidge shrugs, directing her gaze to the floor. Apathy got her through the war, not humor. Lance was differently wired than the rest of them though. Her dark jokes were lost upon his light hearted fun in the same way his own jokes were lost upon her. 

“Just...thanks. For helping me out anyway. I’m a real jerk sometimes with the whole lack of sensitivity thing but I don’t mean it, I swear.” Suddenly, he’s smiling, gazing down at her and suddenly something in Pidge’s mind kicks into a different gear. “It’s nice, knowing you’ve got my back the same way I got yours. Of course, it’s not really along ‘saving my life’ guidelines but you’re there for me, Pidge.” 

She can’t reply. The blushing comes back, the words stuck in her throat and her mouth too dry to function. She shakes her head, then nods, then frantically lifts her hands in a wild nonsensical gesture. Lance looks lost, tilting his head like a puppy and before Pidge knows it, she’s on her feet and racing out the door like hellhounds are at her feet.  

She has to find Hunk.

 


	2. Risky Moves

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Our poor Pidgeon is lost and confused. Such is love.

When Pidge finds Hunk, he’s comfortably situated in the empty lounge, with a plate of snacks and no questions asked as she settles beside him. She steals the blanket draped in his lap and falls against his arm, heart thumping in her ears.  

They sit in solidarity, Hunk flipping through a book and Pidge stuck with a thousand yard stare. Her clammy hands rotate what she assumes to be a cracker between her fingers, her shoulders shaking under the bright yellow blanket. She wonders if Lance would try to follow her. Just the thought of having him nearby while she’s this much of a mess makes her nervous. 

“So what do you need?” Hunk skips the questioning and jumps straight to action. He looks up from the book and Pidge hesitates on how to answer. Bluntness. That was always her method when regular descriptions wouldn’t help.

"I need you to keep me far away from Lance, at all costs."

Hunk stares back, arching a brow. "Why?"

Pidge huffs. The feeling in her chest tightens, bursts, floods her with embarrassment, and the words drop out of her mouth in a graceless hurry. "Because I'm in love with him or something."

Hunk doesn’t reply. Instead, his eyes widen and Pidge avoids the laughing smile that splits across his face. If she wasn’t red before, she’s definitely red now.

“Pidge!” Hunk declares, dropping the book as if it burst into flames. 

“Don’t!” She hisses, throwing her hands over her eyes. A weight lifts off her chest, the overbearing load lightened by transferring such a deadly arsenal over to another person, but Pidge worries how well Hunk can hide it. “You can’t...you can’t tell _anyone!_  Especially not Lance!”

“I wouldn’t,” Hunk assures genuinely. “I get it’s a secret. But like...oh _man_ , Pidge, are you gonna make a move?”

“No. I’m letting this fester so it can rot away on its own.” The cracker crumbles in her hands, leaving a mess in her lap. Her head wants to hurt. 

Hunk muses for a second, as Pidge stares at the floor. “...how long has this been going on?”

_Two weeks._ Pidge doesn’t want to admit she’s calculated it all to the exact moment she knew it happened. She shrugs, eyes still trained to the floor. “I don’t know.”

“Oh, you know.” Hunk nudges her gently on the arm, settling against the couch. He raises an inviting arm and Pidge snuggles against him, very much seeking a Hunk Therapy Session. “So like...I’m not gonna say I’m _surprised_ , but I’m a little curious as to what you see in him?”

Pidge bites her lip, casting her glasses crooked as she sinks her head against Hunk’s chest. “I don’t know either. I just...I don’t _know_ , Hunk. He’s arrogant and impulsive and overly confident and annoying and yet I don’t get it, he’s...” She thinks back to how much of a mess he makes of her, how her careful calculative brain steadily breaks down in his presence. “Gosh, Hunk, he’s like a virus! He gets into my head and...and messes it all up!”

“Naturally,” Hunk quips. “But maybe that’s good. Maybe it means he can reciprocate. Maybe you’re the virus to his brain too, or however you wanna make that analogy.”

“No.” Pidge grits her teeth. 

“Aww, Pidge, this is adorable.”

“ _No_.”

“You two are _perfect_ for each other, really. You keep him from making things spontaneously combust and he can give you a little bit of leeway in your life besides just coding and training and researching all the time.”

“ _Noooo_.” Pidge flops onto the couch, away from Hunk’s radiating warmth. She’d brave the less inviting space couch to get away from teasing. “Hunk, I...I don’t get it. I don’t get _him_.”

“But you like him, that’s for sure.”

Pidge kicks her foot against Hunk’s thigh, ignoring his yelp of protest. “Therapy me, dammit.”

“Okayyy...” Hunk rubs the side of his thigh, considering. “Either you wanna make your move or give him time. Cuz if these things do escalate, you know you’ll have to tell the rest of the team, right?”

Pidge covers her face with the blanket and groans. It isn’t happening. It is never happening. She vows to herself she’d let the feeling snuff out like the candles in her room. This was a fire she _wasn’t_ letting go out of control.

“There’s another thing,” Pidge mutters, reluctant.

“Spill.”

“Shiro’s missions.” She shifts underneath the blanket, facing into a yellow expanse of fabric. “Lance and I got them paired together. And I know I’ll be able to hide away from his ridiculous face in Green so long as I avoid visual communications, but...”

“But...” Hunk prompts.

“But...” Pidge can’t argue more. She stays quiet, silently getting warmer under her shelter, her cheeks burning. Of course she can stand it, she’d ignored Lance’s antics before, but as oblivious and goofy as Lance could occasionally be, he was far from stupid. Any wrong-timed remark or reply to him could tip him off, and Pidge wanted to avoid _any_ direction to this path.

She needed to understand what she saw in Lance before deciding to try extinguishing whatever had her falling for him in the first place. 

Hunk lifts off the blanket, the brisk cool air slapping her out of her musings. “You’re gonna be fine, Pidge,” he assures. 

“I know,” Pidge lies.

 

That night, Pidge is lost in technology once more, the subtle blue glow of her room combatted with the harsh shine of her laptop. Hunk agreed to keeping Lance busy when he could so long as Pidge requested it beforehand, and she attempts to use this newfound ability to calm her nerves. She meshes two wires together on a particular trinket, marking her observations on the laptop.

Her mind wanders, thinking about the darkness of space, the black inky depths of a night speckled with stars, and before she knows it, she’s plunged back in the dank deep sea with Green. Pidge’s breath hitches, but before she tries to disperse the memory, she finds herself curious to a specific turn of events.

She lets the memory replay. 

 

Green doesn’t respond. No matter what Pidge does, no matter how much frantic button mashing or calculated sequences she attempts, there isn’t so much as a light flashing or single sound. 

“Can anyone hear me?! Hello?!” Pidge grits her teeth against the painful static in her ears. She knows that at least two of her teammates had seen her fall; this wasn’t entirely hopeless, surely.

She lifts her head back up to the window, the inky black depths of the sea that threatens to imprison her. Suddenly, fear seizes her chest, ice water in her veins, and her fingers curl against Green’s controls. What direction was she falling? Where was she even going? Could she be sinking, or was the current of the sea taking her in a whole new direction her mind couldn’t comprehend? Did lights even work in this type of sea?

What was out there with her?

Frustrated, she spams more of Green’s controls. She steels her nerves and keeps herself from losing her mind, but the growing isolation bothers even her own introverted nature. Or rather, _questionable_ isolation. God forbid there be a predator out there larger than the lion. 

When button mashing doesn’t work, Pidge settles for sinking back in her seat and continuously trying communication. Her comm crackles and hisses at her, like wild flames devouring her last ties for help, and she begins to assess survival strategies.

She’s got food and water packed tightly in the back of the cockpit. Her suit stabilizes temperature so long as the degree range doesn’t reach immeasurable temperatures. Being alone wasn’t so bad; Pidge could keep conversations on her own, however loony it made her sound. She’d be out eventually, she knew that. 

One hour passes. Green jerks and Pidge realizes she’s hit something. Perhaps not sea bottom; surely, the planet was bigger than that. She thanks her luck that whatever shelf Green landed on wasn’t too far from the surface.

Two hours pass. Pidge keeps track. She scratches out notes in a stray notepad she’d stored away, doodling escape tactics, waiting for the possibility for Green to fire back up. She tests controls every twenty minutes. Green remains stubbornly silent.

Four hours pass. Pidge wonders if a nap is possible. She drinks some water, removing her helmet and feeling the brisk temperature beginning to fill the cabin. The sea out there is cold and relentless. 

Six hours. She tries the comm again. For a split second, she feels like she hears the chirp of a familiar voice but she can’t pin the person. She sings a couple songs to herself. She watches the sea, tense, praying for nothing to snap out of the darkness and take hold of her.

Seven. Her rescue appears.

Pidge feels it more than senses it any other way. The energy of another lion reaches her proximity and something in her buzzes with energy. After a while, one of the nearby hatches open, the water-tight escape exit to the right of her lion, and who walks into the cockpit but Lance.

“Hark! Fear not, my gentle damsel in distress, for your knight in shining armor has arrived!” Lance strikes a ridiculous pose, lifting his chin to a nonexistent spotlight. Pidge humors him with a snort, kicking towards his leg and smirking as he breaks his pose to dodge. 

“You’re insufferable.” Regardless, she throws her arms around him, finally feeling secure and assured as he returns the gesture. “How’d you find me?”

“Blue’s got some wicked sonar. She works in any sea, Pidge, this was like her typical day job.” He pulls away, assessing her, patting her shoulders. “You ok? Shiro was hella worried...it took us forever to get rid of those fighters, but damn was he kicking it into overdrive to go after you.”

“Yeah. I’m alright.” Pidge notices then, the slight glean to his armor, the glowing Altean rope tied around his waist. “Wait...Lance, did you _swim_ through that?”

“I...I wanted to come in person, make sure you were alright. Shiro’s back in blue, waiting on me.” Lance gestures toward the water with a nod of his head. “Brilliant aerodynamics through that stuff, I was as graceful as a dolphin, you should’ve seen me.”

“Oh, I can imagine.” Pidge squeezes his arm before he lifts them from her shoulders. “You scared every creature from a 5 mile radius with what you’d call perfect form.”

“Pidgeon, you wound me.” Lance pulls a face, before turning back towards the hatch. “So uh, considering the fact I’ve got a lion functioning correctly a few feet away, do you wanna swim back with me?”

“Oh god, are you _crazy_?” Pidge feels a jolt up her spine at the idea of stepping out into that black expanse. “That’s like...swimmable _space_ out there.”

“Cosmos with currents! Undulating universe!” Lance cracks a grin before waving his arms towards the hatch. “Come onnn, Pidge, I wanna swimming buddy. Plus, Shiro can worry less about how alive you are once he sees you. Also I don’t think you wanna be knocked around once Blue starts dragging Green up.”

“I...” Pidge stands rooted to her spot, heart stuck in her throat. “Lance, I...”

“Hey, don’t worry.” Suddenly, he grips her hand, fingers intertwining, and Pidge feels compelled to look Lance straight in the face.

“I’ve got you, Pidge.” There. In his eyes, a Pidge sees something spark. A deep resonating message that she grasps for a meaning of and something in her chest shifts so suddenly, it’s nearly painful.  

He pulls her into him, wrapping her arms around him and it takes a second for her to remember how to breathe again. She takes heed of his warning—“Hold on”—before they’re suddenly stepping out the hatch, shutting it behind them, and bracing for the second door leading into the waters. Pidge glances at the drains below her, murky with black residue and Lance calls out a warning before he opens the door and darkness envelopes them.

He holds Pidge tight. The soft blue glow of the rope leads out into a vague distance Pidge still can’t calculate. Everything is quiet, except the sound of the heartbeat in her ears. 

Lance never lets go.

 

Pidge comes back to the view of her room, the glow of the rope fading away into the more spread-out hue of the lights lining the ceiling. 

It was the look in Lance’s eyes that stirred things in her chest. But yet, even after pinning the physical sign, Pidge still feels utterly and hopelessly confused.

What did she see in him? What made this happen? Had her subconscious decided to torture her and fall in love and let it finally click together? Or were the throes of affection barely beginning? 

Pidge throws the heels of her palms against her eyes, tilting her head away from her screen. She groans, the noise bouncing against the walls, encasing her in sounds of her own misery. 

_Why?_


End file.
